Navivasi (New Fragrance): A solo show by Ajay Dhapa

Between memory and motion, Ajay Dhapa reflects on contentment.

At the centre, a lady in blue, his mother, holds the rope of a jhoola. Her gesture is simple, yet infinite: she rocks him between past and present, sleep and awakening, safety and flight. The swing becomes more than motion—it becomes rhythm, continuity, the axis of his world. Her hands, both propel and restrain. She urges him to move forward, and pulls him home. Through her, love becomes direction; restraint becomes imperative. In the lower corner, the artist appears, absorbed in play. He launches paper rockets that dance across the canvas. They drift, fragile yet purposeful. These are not just things for play, but metaphors for freedom and direction—symbols of ambition and awareness. He plays, but with purpose. The closed shutters and windows suggest a divide: the boundary between his inner world and the relentless pace of the outer one. Within these barriers lies the artist’s inner stillness, a space where memory, emotion, and meaning move gently—like the swing his mother once set in motion.

This work is a portrait of belonging, of motion suspended between memory and becoming, a dialogue between the child who dreamed and the man who remembers.

This work articulates the architecture of care: the invisible systems of protection and perseverance that shape one’s becoming. The work becomes a study in duality: protection and perseverance, stillness and propulsion, tenderness and toil.

A mosquito net tent sits as both barrier and sanctuary. It suggests the containment of safety, yet its openness invites the world in. The string that holds it is guided by the father’s hand—the unseen force that steadies and protects. Below, another figure, also the father, pulls a toy vehicle forward, his gesture charged with motion and endurance. Here, labour becomes language; effort, inheritance.

Ajay Dhapa’s composition binds these gestures within one unbroken line, the thread of protection that holds even as it teaches release. Within this tension lies the essence of inheritance: love as both refuge and resistance, a tether that teaches flight.

The artist turns his attention to the choreography of everyday life—its laughter, its gossip, its little absurdities.

The centre hums with a chakki machine, the pulse of domestic rhythm. Two women seen in the painting to grind grain to discuss their worlds. The thread becomes a metaphor for conversation, the invisible current through which relationships are sustained. Above them, a man (the shopkeeper) has his face buried in his palms, half-amused, half-resigned, is the silent witness to this daily theatre. And at the bottom of the canvas, a horse appears: not belonging to either woman, but a wry emblem representing the husband as an idea rather than an individual.

In Ajay Dhapa’s visual language, the horse becomes a symbol of endurance and routine, echoing the cycles of domestic life. It is the tireless presence within their stories—the provider, the partner, the weight and rhythm of the everyday.

This work is about gathering light from memory. Diwali, a season of sound and flame, returns here as remembrance.

Unable to travel home, Ajay Dhapa reconstructs the festival through fragments of memory, assembling a constellation of moments that glimmer between the real and the remembered. Across the canvas unfold scenes of his hometown: the hand pump, the narrow passageway leading home, a man lighting fireworks, the colony dog, and at the bottom, the man in green lighting diyas—his grandfather, the custodian of light. Dhapa paints in hues of soil and celebration: ochres, ambers, deep reds and soft glows of flame. These tones root the work in the ground of belonging while evoking the warmth and radiance of festivity.

Here, Diwali is not festivity but feeling—a homecoming without journey, a geography of light that endures where distance cannot reach.

Mend where you can. Cut where you must. Life’s weight is not meant to tear us apart.

In the dim light of a modest shop, a tailor sits, surrounded by the sacred tools of his trade: an L-scale, a hip-curve, a pair of scissors: silent oracles of structure, of boundaries, of the invisible rules that shape the world and the geometry of life. Two figures stretch a measuring tape across the canvas, representing the burdens we place upon one another. Life pulls invisible cords—anxieties, resentments, fears—tugging tight until hearts ache. These are the burdens we place upon ourselves. Too often, we stretch them until they pierce the soul. But the artist’s voice is gentle, insistent: do not stretch. The philosophy is unspoken yet undeniable: life is a tapestry of challenges, of conflicts, of emotions too vast to measure fully. Some threads must be cut, not in anger, but in acceptance. Others must be restored, not in perfection, but in care.

To stretch a problem is to betray the rhythm of existence; to mend it, to cut it, to honour it—this is the sacred work of living.